Talent for Tech: Bringing experienced hires on board
Onboarding senior staff becomes critical when a startup’s founders can no longer manage all aspects of the business. Building a management team, however, is a very different process than the organic recruiting practices associated with finding a co-founder or a developer. Convincing talented leaders to potentially leave their corporate positions and salaries and join your startup is a process that requires a great deal of time and patience.
Always be selling
Brent Lowe, former VP of Employee Experience at Achievers, is an advocate of the “Who” process of hiring, as coined by authors Geoff Smart and Randy Street in their book, Who: The A Method for Hiring. Lowe explains, “They talk about how, with senior hires, the sales process starts at the very first point of contact―be it a networking call, website, email or cold call. Whatever the approach, companies always need to be selling themselves at every step of the way.”
At Achievers, executive candidates are given packages that highlight the market outlook of the company. They are similar to a sales package that might outline a platform or a product; however, they cover Achiever’s industry, their high-level strategy and their plan for growth from a revenue standpoint. Rob Catalano, Senior Director of Marketing at Achievers, says “a lot of senior people are looking for opportunities to grow organizations, and this package gets them thinking about how they can do that.”
Engage a recruiting agency
Recruiting agencies can greatly assist your executive search by tapping into a much larger candidate pool. Lowe advises, though, to be selective when choosing a firm. He is a proponent of retained agencies (as opposed to contingent ones) when it comes to this type of search. “Retained agencies are a bit more expensive, but they take over the search completely. They get paid for whomever you hire, regardless of who finds them.” On the other hand, if a contingent agent does not find the hire, they do not get paid.
Lowe clarifies, “there are pros and cons to both. In my opinion, it’s best to use a contingent agent for most of your searches. However, if you’re looking for a really senior person or for someone who is going to make a huge impact to the organization, then a retained agent will be the one that does a more thorough job since they usually only have a couple of clients at a time.”
That being said, hiring a search firm does not mean startups should disconnect from the process. Rather, they need to be actively involved, assessing candidates and providing the agency with ongoing feedback.
Uncover the motivators
Naturally, many startups cannot offer their senior hires the same salaries that a large corporation would offer. TechEdge, an Ottawa-based firm that provides compensation advice to technology companies, reports that the average salaries of a small-business CFO, COO and Chief Engineering Officer are, respectively, $ 149,000, $152,000 and $157,000.
Fortunately, this may be less of a hindrance than you think. Catalano explains, “there are a lot of people out there who will take less pay to feel more engaged at work. Once they have their base needs met financially, candidates may be willing to take a pay cut in order to feel a part of something bigger.”
So if money is not the prime motivator for senior hires to work, what is? As Lowe sees it, “there are many other reasons that candidates join or stay with a firm, and it is up to the company to figure those out. The earlier you can determine a candidate’s motivators, the earlier you can move compensation out of the conversation.” One common motivator Lowe sees time and time again is the opportunity to build a firm from the ground up. “Once you know that, you can address it at every step of the recruiting process, right through to the offer and onboarding.”
However, Lowe cautions startups to remember that even after a candidate signs with your firm, they are still in play. “Good senior hires are going to continue to get a lot of phone calls, and it’s important that your selling job doesn’t stop until six months after that person has started. The motivators need to be continuously tapped.”
Another common motivator is company culture and the desire of executives to be part of an environment that is different from what they’d find at a corporate job. To play this up, Achievers lists a ‘top 100 reasons to work here’ on their website. Says Lowe, “Achievers has a very strong culture which is well-defined, and it is important that they showcase that.”
While salary may not be a hindrance for active candidates, it can be for passive ones―those who are not formally in the job market. To overcome this, Lowe advises that firms stress the potential financial upside to candidates, whether that is through equity, bonuses or other pay-for-performance benefits. “You can even put together a spreadsheet that shows candidates how much they could make over the next three years, depending on how well the firm does. Give them the spreadsheet with all the assumptions and let them play around with it. This will really put together a compelling story, and paint a clear picture for candidates of their next three to five years.”
